Most plastic is made from non-renewable raw materials such as oil or natural gas. The extraction of these materials, along with the process of converting it into plastic, releases carbon into the atmosphere which adds to climate change.

Unlike the raw materials for traditional plastic, sugarcane is a renewable resource making it a much more sustainable option for packaging. It also has a climate-positive carbon footprint because sugarcane helps remove CO2 from the air as it grows.

The sugarcane used for our pottles is sustainably and ethically sourced from Brazil as a byproduct of the sugarcane industry where it’s milled and transformed into sugarcane ethanol which is then used to create Sugarcane Plastic. The processing facilities that make sugarcane ethanol operate almost exclusively on energy that comes from sugarcane by-products, and any surplus energy is sent to the grid. Even better, every metric tonne of Sugarcane Plastic captures 3.09 metric tonnes of CO2! The Sugarcane Plastic is sent in bulk to our packaging manufacturer in Auckland where it’s molded into our I’m Green™ Pottles.

Whilst our I’m Green™ Pottles may be made from 100% sugarcane, the plastic behaves and performs in exactly the same way as our old packaging: it’s sturdy, food-safe, totally recyclable and is still classed as #2 HDPE plastic plastic, unlike some other types of bio-based plastic. Although nearly all councils accept #2 HDPE for recycling, we know that about 40% of all collected plastic still ends up in landfill. This is why we choose to partner with TerraCycle to guarantee that our packaging can always be recycled in a zero-landfill recycling programme - including our new I’m Green™ Pottles.

We know, we know. Plastic has a bad rap. However, it’s not quite the bad boy of the packaging world that it’s made out to be...

Before choosing to change to Sugarcane Plastic we spent many months researching different types of packaging to understand the pros and cons of the options available to us. Click here to read our blog post and to see a table of the pros and cons of different types of packaging. From it you can see that it’s actually very complicated and unfortunately there is no perfect packaging solution. For us, the pros of Sugarcane Plastic easily outweigh the cons, especially when compared to alternative types of packaging currently available.